


every star dies

by timelessidyll



Category: ATEEZ (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, M/M, Some Fluff, Time Travel Fix-It, mostly angst, some existentionalism, temporary death? cause he comes back pretty soon, very vague i'm sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-04
Updated: 2019-04-04
Packaged: 2020-01-04 20:56:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18351560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/timelessidyll/pseuds/timelessidyll
Summary: in which seonghwa's only regret is letting everything get this bad, and hongjoong wants him to stop being selfless.





	every star dies

**Author's Note:**

> I MIGHT ADD ON TO THIS LATER IDK YET  
> uwu i hope you enjoy this  
> [my twitter!](https://twitter.com/timelessidyll)  
> [my curiouscat!](https://curiouscat.me/timelessidyll)

As Seonghwa stared out into the vastness of the space before them, the specks of stars light-years away, he couldn’t help but miss it. There was something that had been comforting in being surrounded by so much emptiness, that it was alright to be who he was because it wouldn’t judge him for it. The chatter of the rest of the ship broke into his thoughts again as Wooyoung and Jongho started arguing over something. He grimaced and pushed himself away from the layered glass to break up their fight.

 

“You know we can’t touch the pod fuel!” Jongho yelled over Wooyoung’s complaints, nose crinkled and eyebrows furrowed. “It’s literally the one rule we aren’t supposed to break!”

 

“Rules means jackshit if we’re gonna die!” Wooyoung shouted, equally as heated. Seonghwa rolled his eyes and stepped directly in between them. He gave each an unimpressed, side-eyed glare.

 

“Wooyoung, I appreciate your attempts to problem-solve, and thank you for trying to placate him, Jongho, but both of you are forgetting that you don’t make any of the decisions.” His voice was firm and unyielding: both Jongho and Wooyoung’s eyes shifted away, slightly ashamed. He sighed and rested a hand on their shoulders. “Go take a break. I’m sure staring at the same statistics for three hours has frazzled you both.”

 

With a meek, “Yes, sir,” the lieutenant and chief engineer turned around and headed toward the canteen. Seonghwa glanced up at the bridge, overlooking the command room laid out below, and caught Hongjoong’s grim eyes. He walked purposefully to the stairs that would take him up there, stopping by San as he passed.

 

“Any change, San?”

 

“None, sir.” Seonghwa set his lips and nodded briskly. He continued to the bridge, drawing himself into a salute next to Hongjoong.

 

“Captain.”

 

“Stand down, Commander,” Hongjoong answered, slumping his shoulders for a moment to look at him. “What is it?”

 

“The crew is getting restless and there’s been in-fighting,” Seonghwa said bluntly, leaning on the railing of the bridge and taking in the bird’s eye view of the area. “You probably heard Wooyoung and Jongho, right?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Then you know that we’re running out of solutions and ways to ease the minds of the skeleton crew we have left.” It was true that they were running on the bare minimum crew required. Only eight members, including themselves, had been allowed to stay. All the others had been ordered, as lower-level officials, to disembark in the escape pods, designed to hold ten maximum occupants for three months in deep space. A smaller team could last even longer. They were light-years away by now, hopefully closer to safety and civilization. It was more than the  _ Arabia _ could ask for.

 

“I know. God, I fucking know, Seonghwa, but there’s nothing we can do,” he hissed. “Our fuel is dead, our warp space doesn’t have any juice, and we’re 76 light-years away from the nearest inhabited planet. We have nowhere to go.”

 

“They have somewhere to go,” Seonghwa reminded him pointedly. It clicked a moment later what he meant, and Hongjoong’s stance stiffened.

 

“I’d rather not resort to that.”

 

“Well, I quote, ‘We have nowhere to go,’ so why not?” He stood up again and gave Hongjoong another salute. “Think on it, Captain.” He turned on his heel and walked away, already analyzing how his suggestion might turn out.

 

The rest of the day went like all the others before it – slow and uneventful except for the looming knowledge that there was nothing they could do to prolong their fate. When Hongjoong entered his room, silently and shadow-like, Seonghwa wasn’t surprised by his unannounced arrival.

 

“Did you want to–” He was cut off by a finger against his lips, calloused by seven years in the UTF. Hongjoong’s expression was blank, but his eyes still held the frustration and nervousness he wouldn’t let show.

 

“Less talking, hyung.” A smirk curled along his lips, tightening against the finger still pressed to them.

 

“Will you make me? Or should I keep discussing our–” This time, he was dragged down by the collar of the uniform he still wore so that Hongjoong could kiss him, effectively drowning the rest of his sentence in a sea of static noise. He couldn’t quite remember where he was going with it anyway.

 

He tangled his fingers in the hair at the nape of Hongjoong’s neck, tugging at it lightly and greedily silencing the hums that escaped Hongjoong as he did it. He pulled back the slightest bit and opened his eyes a sliver, just enough to see through his eyelashes. Hongjoong was already breathing a little more heavily, and he’d always been a quick blusher.

 

“You know, you’re really bad at ignoring our problems,” he snickered, watching how Hongjoong’s light frown came back and his eyes flickered down to his lips.

 

“We can talk after you’ve kissed me senseless, Hwa-hyung. So are you really going to do this now?”

 

“I guess not,” he teased before pulling Hongjoong back in for a kiss more bruising than the last.

 

* * *

 

It was easier than Seonghwa had thought it would be to complete Hongjoong’s plan. They had to feed everyone a slow-acting sedative at breakfast, but that part of the plan went without a hitch. No one noticed the slightly more bitter taste of the food they were eating, especially not when every bite of ration was important. After that, as each of them fell asleep, one by one they were dragged into an empty escape pod. The only real problems were Mingi and Yunho with their size, but Seonghwa improvised by using one of the hovering gurneys from the med bay.

 

As per Hongjoong’s knowledge, everything was going to plan. As per Seonghwa’s knowledge, it wasn’t quite complete yet.

 

“Joongie, come here for a moment,” he called quietly, leaning against the wall near the escape pod. Hongjoong turned to him curiously.

 

“Yeah?” Seonghwa slipped a hand behind his neck and pulled him forward, dropping something in his pocket at the same time. Hongjoong’s eyes fell closed automatically as Seonghwa kept his open and with a fluid spin, he presses Hongjoong into the barrier and hits the button to remove the barrier long enough to push Hongjoong inside with the rest of the crew. In his moment of disorientation, Seonghwa hits the button to rematerialize the barrier, effectively leaving him in the ship alone.

 

“Wha– Seonghwa, what are you doing!” Hongjoong called frantically once he realized what he’d done, hammering his fists helplessly on the barrier separating them. Seonghwa’s fingers hovered over the ‘eject’ button, hesitating even despite his resolve, and he looked back at Hongjoong.

 

“They need you, Joongie,” he whispered, lifting a hand to rest lightly on the barrier. He fought back the tears threatening his vision and kept his rising sniffles to himself, but the abject heartbreak on Hongjoong’s face was making that extremely difficult. “They need you to lead them. I know you want to protect us, but Joongie.” He blinked away his sorrow. “You’re important to them, and you’re the only one that can hold them together.”

 

“Hyung, you’re important too, don’t say that! What would have happened to them if you hadn’t kept them in line every single day?”

 

“They listen to you, Joongie,” he said, putting his other hand over the same place Hongjoong’s hands were. There were tears trickling from the corners of Hongjoong’s eyes now, but Seonghwa closed off his heart to avoid being affected by them. “I may keep them in line, but when it counts, they turn to you. You’re their leader, their captain. And I know all that bullshit that a captain goes down with his ship, but sometimes you have to let someone else take the sacrifice so that you live to take the rest of us somewhere greater.”

 

Through tears and a cracked voice, Hongjoong managed to say, “Even if everyone else might not need you, which is a fucking lie, I need you, hyung.”

 

“Joongie, don’t cry,” he whispered again, squeezing his eyes shut. “Everyone will support you. You’ll find a way.” The tears didn’t stop and Seonghwa felt his heart fall apart more. “Did you check your pockets?”

 

“What?” He patted his pockets reluctantly and pulled out a dull, dark blue sphere. “A holosphere?”

 

“I put some of my essence in it,” Seonghwa admitted. Hongjoong’s head shot up to give him a bewildered expression. “I knew I was going to do this, Hongjoong. I knew for a while. I also knew you would hate it, so I.” He faltered. “I decided to give you something to remind you of me. I’m not sure if it’ll help, but at least I’ll always be there. In some form.”

 

The tears came back full force, and this time Hongjoong did nothing to hide his sobs. The sedatives they’d given the rest of the crew kept them unaware of the turmoil between the two. “God, I can’t even hate you. This is exactly what you would’ve had to go through.”

 

“I’m sorry,” Seonghwa mumbled, over and over like a mantra as he tried to steel his nerves again.

 

“Don’t do this.” He said nothing in return. Feeling like he was stuck in the liquid gel of a hydropod, Seonghwa walked to the eject button and, ignoring Hongjoong’s voice behind him, pressed it with all the conviction of someone who knew everything that they had to lose. He didn’t turn around as the airlock suctioned the pod into space, didn’t look at the screen that would have allowed him to watch the pod as it drifted out into the emptiness of space. He’d done what he had to in order to keep everything he treasured safe, and that was all that mattered.

 

In the silence left behind, the buzzing in his ears increased its intensity, and Seonghwa was aggressively reminded that he was alone. There was no one left. San, Mingi, Wooyoung, Jongho, Yunho, Yeosang – Hongjoong. They were all gone. His feet seemed to slip out from under him, letting him crumple until his head rested on the control panel, and his breaths suddenly seemed too shallow and insufficient. He was alone and he would die right here, rot and fester in this goddamn ship being borne aimlessly through space, where no one would ever find him and know his story.

 

A goddamn tragedy.

 

It would be better, he thought hazily, to enact the self-destruct sequence. It would, at the very least, keep the  _ Arabia _ from being captured by pirates and refashioned and prevent hackers from tapping into the mainframe and finding sensitive information. By now, the propulsion of the escape pod would have set it on course to take it to the fixed coordinates of the Pollux system, to Alpha Pollux and far, far away from him. A few shaky attempts to input the passcode to enable the self-destruct mechanism eventually let him into the protected server of the system, and despite the tremors of his hand, his mind was set on what he should do.

 

It almost didn’t feel real, like it wasn’t him in this situation. It didn’t feel like he was handing himself his death sentence. It didn’t feel like he was about to die.

 

Better him alone than everyone else with him, he decided. The sequence was activated. Two minutes on the clock until he was stardust floating in the wreckage of the  _ Arabia _ .

 

**If you had a second chance, would you take it?**

 

He was accepting his fate when a voice spoke, seemingly from all around him. When his head shot up to see who it could be, no one was in sight. He hadn’t heard the crackle of the PA, and he knew there was no one beside him.

 

“What the hell?” he mumbled, standing up, ignoring the bold red numbers reading 1:13 behind him.

 

**If you had a chance to turn back time, would you?**

 

“Of course I would.” He didn’t care if he was talking to himself. It wouldn’t matter in another minute anyway.

 

**That’s what they all say. Why would you do it?**

 

“Because Hongjoong is hurting because of me and he’ll always be reminded that I’m not with him. If I could undo all of this and change the past to save him from that pain, I would.” It brought stinging tears to his eyes, but Seonghwa fixed his eyes on the doors in front of him.

 

**Then let’s play a little game. Choose your moment, and I will reset the clock. The real fun comes in watching how you’ll fix this mess.**

 

The incessant beeping of the self-destruct clock became dimmer behind him, and rather than feeling tugged out of his body, Seonghwa felt like his body was vibrating through space. Space-time? He wasn’t sure. Was the voice real or was he imagining it in the last moments of his existence to ease the pain of non-existence?

 

**Good luck, little star. I believe you’ll need it.**

 

The beeping stopped and a siren sounded, and in the midst of the explosions detonating throughout the  _ Arabia _ , Seonghwa disappeared.

 

* * *

 

 

Three months ago, the night before the crew would board the  _ Arabia _ , Commander Seonghwa Park woke up with a gasp and a memory of times that had yet to pass.

**Author's Note:**

> [my twitter!](https://twitter.com/timelessidyll)   
>  [my curiouscat!](https://curiouscat.me/timelessidyll)


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